Image for National Votes for Women Trail marker for Mary Barr Clay - located at White Hall State Historic Site, 500 White Hall Shrine Road, Richmond KY @37.8331337,-84.3548585
The marker content states: "Mary Barr Clay childhood home. Pres., Amer. Woman Suffrage Assoc. 1883. Addressed U.S. House of Reps. in support of women's suffrage 1884. (William C. Pomeroy Foundation 2018, [marker no.] 3)"
Mary Reddig Cramer (1847-1915) of Lexington was a Vice President of the Kentucky Equal Rights Association from 1892 to 1913. She was also a member of the Woman's Club of Central Kentucky and the Kentucky chapter of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union. She attended many of the conventions of the National American Woman Suffrage Association between 1893 and 1912. This image was supplied to H-Kentucky for the Kentucky Woman Suffrage Project by Walt Cramer, her great-grandson.
Mary Caroline Creegan Roark (1 September 1861 - 1 February 1922) was born just south of Brighton, Iowa, on a family farm in Walnut Township, Jefferson County, Iowa, the daughter of Mary Ann McKee Creegan, of Ohio and Daniel Creegan, a farmer from Virginia.
Laura Sutton Bruce was born on August 16, 1853, in Lexington, Kentucky. She was the third of seven daughters of Elizabeth T. Colesberry and William W. Bruce. Her father was a wealthy man whose fortune came from hemp and bagging manufacturing, having partnered for some years with the Lexington millionaire Benjamin F. Gratz. W.W.
Portrait of Laura Clay (1849-1941) when she was probably in her 30s - currently hanging at White Hall in Richmond, Kentucky. The portrait was done by her friend and fellow suffragist, Laura Sutton Bruce.
With global pandemic on our minds, it is interesting to think back to 1918 when disease was also raging. Someone asked this week, how did suffragists, who were in the latter stages of pushing for the Nineteenth amendment, deal with the disruptions that the 1918 epidemic brought. Here in Kentucky, suffragists often temporarily put their work for the vote on hold.
Jessie Leigh Hutchinson (1878-1932) grew up in Little Rock, Arkansas, and when she married E. L. Hutchinson in 1901 she came with him to live in Lexington. Their home was at 631 East Main Street. She served as Vice President of the Kentucky Equal Rights Association in 1907, 1912-15, and in 1917.
The Kentucky Federation of Labor meets in Lexington in January 1911, and on January 10th hears from representatives from KERA and various county Equal Rights Associations. The assembly heard speeches from Dean Irene T.
